500€ for Photoshop!

[Moglakos]

I check a previous thread about photoshop, that guy wanted a pc to do ps in a 600€ budget and unfortunately i have 100€ less.

 

I just have some questions:

 

1) Does PS needs a damn good GPU or not?

2) Does it more CPU hungry than GPU?

3) Are 4GB Ram enough?

[ShadowCaptain]

SNIP

 

 

CPU and RAM!!! GPU is more important for rendering/video work, though can help PS too 

[D4RK]

ram first then cpu, and for the gpu the bigger the file resolutions that u are dealing with the more you will need a good gpu.

[ForsakenLive]

Like Shadow said, it's pretty much CPU dependant.

 

There are benchmarks and nice threads with this topic, and most showed that it's nice to have a dedicated GPU for acceleration. PS uses GPU acceleration, and has a compatibility list (which is outdated and leaves compatible hardware out). Most of the budget builds I've seen results online, were just fine with even lower end AMD GPUs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/BgWYhM
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/BgWYhM/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£130.94 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI H97 Guard-Pro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£51.03 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: G.Skill Value 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (£73.01 @ Dabs)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£35.94 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 270X 2GB PCS+ Video Card  (£123.82 @ More Computers)
Case: Fractal Design Core 2300 ATX Mid Tower Case  (£36.95 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair CSM 450W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£45.46 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £497.15
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-02-02 17:03 GMT+0000

 

 

The i5 fits the budget nicely, and if you can you can try saving for a better part here, like the Xeon E3 1230 V3 that at £180 competes with the i7, thanks to its hyper-treading support. Which is what I'd personally do, a £50 price increase that you can even reach by reusing an old hard drive or case. Try to see if you can get some extra quids, it's worth it.

The R9 270X shows promising results on CS 6.0 and higher. Amd has optimized its OpenCL capabilities a lot, and thankfully adobe does supports it. There are a few benchmarks and reviews about this, but the best out there is not in English (sorry) http://ht4u.net/reviews/2013/sapphire_r9_270x_toxic_im_test/index35.php google translate if if you want.